Improving Daylight Performance of Light-well in Multi-story Apartment Buildings

The proliferation of multi-storey apartment buildings in Jordan makes it difficult to provide interior spaces, in all apartments, with the correct orientation and openings in the right directions. Therefore, daylighting and natural ventilation are highly required in core spaces. Light-wells, the intermediate spaces between two or more apartments, are widely used in Jordan in residential buildings to ventilate and light core spaces. The current research aims to develop the light-well as a daylighting device to significantly convey daylight to core areas in multi-storey residential buildings in regions with a hot climate. The new device will help to transport the daylight over long distances, especially to lower floors, by collecting daylight and transporting it to inner spaces. The research used computer simulation to study many light-well variables to optimize its performance. Moreover the research studied using concentric channel light-wells for both daylighting and natural ventilation. The central channel will guide sunlight and daylight into occupied spaces, while the outer channel enables passive ventilation. In so doing, designers can use sophisticated materials and designs for lighting channels (the inner channel) with minimum maintenance and cleaning, and the outer channel for ventilation. Using two concentric channels showed great potential for developing such light-wells if both ventilation and daylighting are taken into consideration.